I took a walk to the site of the Leicester's demolished New Walk Centre at lunchtime yesterday to get my fill of the rubble porn everyone seems enamoured with at the moment.
As most people who have been in this part of the city in the past three days, the absence of those two Soviet-era towering monoliths looming over the skyline seems strange at first. Then you realise that area of the city centre - around the top end of Market Street and at the junction of Belvoir Street, Newarke Street and Welford Place - seems lighter, more airy and less intimating.
I'm sure people with a lot more qualifications than me could better explain the psychological impact of razing imposing 1970s eyesore buildings to the ground, but it certainly seems to have had a positive impact.
Hairdresser Barrie Stephen has already told the Mercury he's delighted with the extra light now flooding into his salon, which lies at what had been the foot of the former city council HQ in King Street. However, I think much of the impact is more subtle.
As I walked around the tangled mess of piled up concrete and metal girders which are strewn across much of the 1.8-acre site, I felt a strange sense of optimism. I think fellow lunchtime strollers also curious to check out the rubble porn on offer also felt the same.
The prospect of something new, shiny and exciting being built on the site of an unloved office complex, which had been condemned almost as soon as it was built 40 years ago, now seems tangible.
But who will be given the job of creating this new development, and, more importantly, who will move into it? I've heard a number of names over the past few weeks and I'm likely to hear more before city mayor Sir Peter Soulsby decides to put us out of our misery some time soon.
As I stared, slightly transfixed by the fact that the kiosk which used to marshal the car park barrier at the back of the old centre had managed to survive Sunday's "blow down" despite being only 10 yards away, a Polish man, probably in his 30s, joined me. "So they've finally got rid of it", he said. "When I came to Leicester nine years ago I couldn't believe you had such an ugly building."
He was quite excited, more so than me and the fifty-something chap who had also now begun peering through the fence. Pulling down monuments to failure and old thinking is probably something he could identify with better.
I hope the new buildings which spring up in its place are to his liking. I hope the businesses which move into them excite him too. This rubble-filled void has the opportunity to excite a lot of people, and the chance should not be squandered.
Monuments to failure can take a long time to get rid of.
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